


The Mask of Change

by WotanAnubis



Category: Tyranny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Rebel Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 06:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17996894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WotanAnubis/pseuds/WotanAnubis
Summary: In which Tunon struggles with the new world he's found himself in.





	The Mask of Change

Tunon did not understand.

Change had to come to the world. Tunon was not used to change. For centuries, he had embodied Kyros' Law, which had been unchanging because it had been perfect. So Tunon, too, had been unchanging.

But Kyros' Law had not been perfect. Kyros had not... been... _entirely_... perfect.

Now Tunon had a new Master. One who had been raised under Kyros' Law and had rejected it. One who had once studied under Tunon and now sought to teach him. One who needed a new law for the new realm she hoped to shape.

It was not a smooth process. The Archon of the Tiers was willing to let the divided Tiersmen to keep their separate cultures, demanding only that they respected and co-operated with one another. This, of course, was an obvious recipe for disaster. Only through absolute unity could there be order. Division only bred chaos and ruination. Had not the failed conquest of the Tiers proved this point perfectly? If the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus had been united in thought and purpose, they would have succeeded. Instead, they had let their distrust, their competitiveness, their _differences_ , overrule their sense of duty, which had, in the end, led to the destruction of them both.

But the Archon disagreed, as she so often did. Differences did not need to lead to conflict. Allowing people their habits would not automatically lead to the disintegration of the Tiers. Besides, uniformity of thought would only lead to stagnation, or so she claimed. A society that did not allow a bit of deviation would never discover or appreciate anything new, and would ultimately be capable of nothing except clinging to a fading glory while the rest of the world passed them by.

Tunon had not been convinced. But since he had sworn an oath of fealty to the new Archon, he had also resigned himself to the fact that she would shape the Tiers according to her vision, and that it was his role to help her make that vision a reality.

Even so, he'd argued about it with her frequently. Their disagreements had become quite passionate at times. Tunon had never argued with Kyros.

But even though the Archon insisted that the Tiers would be a realm of disunity, at least the law would be the law. Even she agreed that her domain required a single law to applied to everyone equally.

Kyros' Law had never done that. Kyros' Law had only even applied to those who were not Kyros.

Still, even here, Tunon's former Fatebinder proved... difficult. Yes, the law should apply to everyone equally, but she felt very strongly that compassion, too, should be part of the law.

Tunon had not understood her point, and her attempts at explanation had only made things worse. The law was the law. Those who broke the law ought to be punished. Those who broke a specific law should recieve a specific punishment. It was the only way the law could possibly work. Because if it did not the law was not the law, it was simply the arbitrary enforcement of the ruler's whims.

The new Archon had insisted that it was not that simple. That judgement had to involve more than the bare minimum of facts. Say, she'd said, there were two merchants who'd failed to pay their taxes. Should they both be punished? Of course. And should their punishments both be the same? Naturally. But let's say one merchant hadn't paid his taxes because he was so greedy that he didn't want to give up even a fraction of his fortune and the other merchant hadn't paid his taxes because he'd been robbed and had barely enough money left to feed himself. Should their punishments still be the same? Tunon had answered yes. Their crime had been the same, their punishment should be the same. The circumstances did not matter.

But the circumstances did matter, the Archon of the Tiers had argued. They had to matter. The law might be black and white, but life wasn't, and if the law couldn't bend to accommodate the messy realities of life, then it wasn't the law, it was just another tool of an indifferent oppressor.

In the end, Tunon and the Archon had reached a compromise. The new laws of the Tiers had been written up to account for all possible circumstances that could reasonably be expected and definite guidelines for those areas that were still murky. As a result, the lawbooks of the Tiers were more than triple in size than those of the Northern Empire. Tunon's Fatebinders had not been very happy with that. They'd appreciated the simplicity of Kyros' Law and were not at home with all this sudden _nuance_.

So that was the Tiers now. A divided land held together with a patchwork mess of a lawbook. It would not survive. It could not survive. And once it fell into chaos, as Tunon was sure it would, the Archon of Tiers would return to being Tunon's student once more to learn how to draw up a sensible set of laws.

Still, the Tiers worked. For now. In harmony. Of a sort. No rebellions had flared up. Yet. The only violence came from scattered brigands that were quickly dispatched by Verse's bloody Sisterhood.

The Archon claimed that this supposed peace endured because people who felt protected and cared for by their society would in turn feel loyal to that society. She also said that people who had simply been terrified into submission would never feel true loyalty to their society or its Overlord and would, at best, wait patiently until the time was right to rise up once more.

It all sounded like nonsense to Tunon. However, he could not deny the reports that came trickling in from the Northern Empire. Kyros' control over the furthest reaches of Her Empire had become ever more tenuous, and there were even whispers that some regions had actually declared independence. Whether that was true or not, it was a fact there was widespread unrest throughout the Northern Empire that Kyros had not yet managed to put down. Some of the Archons and their armies had proved less loyal than formerly assumed, and even the Edicts no longer held their terrifying power now that _someone_ knew how to interfere with them.

So perhaps Tunon's former student did have a point. Somewhere.

Well, enough of these ruminations. There was still work to do. The laws of the Tiers might be a mess, but it was still up to him to sit in judgement and see them carried out.

Tunon floated onto the balcony overlooking his Court. There was a crowd of people gathered below, and they all turned to face him. For a moment, Tunon didn't recognise the expression on their faces. He was used to people keeping their face absolutely impassive so as to not give away their guilt. Or to try to look not as terrified as they truly felt before the face of Kyros' Law. But these people, these Tiersmen, they looked at him with... hope. They expected him to be just.

Tunon did not understand this.

But, somewhere, there was some part of him that did not really mind either.


End file.
